Silent

 Altered version of Silent

... ... ...

This is a weird little group... I guess you could make a story out of it ....about something sinister crash landing in an already spooky woods.... and then the whole world burns to the ground. :)

Romantic Movie list

This is a little late for Valentine's Day... but on the way to our Valentine's dinner (Culvers.... because everything else was too crowded) Joe asked me what my top 10 Romantic movies were... we make a lot of lists. So here, in no particular order, are my favorite romantic movies, or scenes.

-Electric Dreams
-Grease
-Chunking Express
-Whisper of the Heart
-Punch Drunk Love
-Conan
- Empire Strikes Back
-The scene in Kill Bill 2 where Bill is killed.
-Princess Bride.... but to be honest Mandy Patinkin is my favorite part of the whole movie... and if I start getting into movie crushes this list will get very long.
-When I was young Xanadau, I still love the movie but the main guy is kind of a dick.
-Terminator

I was cleaning tonight and came across a little bag of patches. I think I wanted to sew them on to a jacket of some sort. They would have all been on the same jacket . 

hmmmmm... I think.... ???? .......that would have been an interesting jacket. 

 Now I just have a bunch of patches... 

Too late to learn to swim

-warning_

I am going to spit this out without looking into too many facts……… I feel a bit sloppy about that, but, I want to keep the meanings and associations I currently hold intact for a little longer……………. So expect factual errors in my scientific content…. and investigate the info before you believe anything I have written. 

The image of an octopus holding a drowning woman under the water has been lurking in my brain since childhood. 

 There are points of interest for me that don’t quite make a cohesive story ……more like impulse driven shadows of  a thought that fill my head and crash into one another but never click together the way they should…. like if you started putting together a puzzle and then realized that not only were there pieces missing, but at least two different puzzles had been mixed together. 

  I can’t solve it or explain it fully ….. and that keeps me tethered to it …..the feelings are old and distant in a way that creates a depth for me … so when thoughts of it popped into my head again recently I decided to indulge. 

Here is a list of my preoccupations and some history:

• I watched a lot of science and nature shows as a kid…. Usually when I was alone in my basement (I also watched a lot of cartoons… wow saying that I see that I have not changed all that much…. except that my entire house is my basement now ) So I developed a lot of crazy ideas based on half facts, fantasy and ignorance. I specifically loved deep sea creatures. Not fish so much but wiggly little tentacled plants and armored monsters … and the octopus……..it seemed like a completely  different world. 
• The octopus hoarded things ….collecting and stashing the things it “liked” but there was a mindlessness to it …. I was more emotional about animals when I was young. I thought it was possible to reason with and befriend anything… so the compulsion to collect was a little frightening to me.  In my imagination, when I tried to interact with Mr. octopus there would be a non-malice but tragic misunderstanding between us… Where contact with the beast would mean my capture…. and eventual death………. because it just didn’t get that I couldn’t breath as it added me to its’ stash. 
• This connects to the point above ---- the arms act on their own… I heard some factoid about complex automatic responses rather than conscious decision making with the arms… so there isn’t a concept or thought that controls them …… they are automatically probing and exploring and attaching…. like a climbing vine attaching to a wall…. there is a frantic desperation to such an impulsive and uncontrollable appendage. [ Ok writing that I see the sexual implications of all of this …. I watch too much hentai to fein ignorance….. but at the same time when I am drawing, my thoughts are more about softness and vulnerability versus ensnaring captivity in a submerged toxic environment….. the sexual implications are realized later…. I’m not saying they aren’t there mind you ….. more like after I am done I look at it and go “huh…that’s kinda fetishy …. neat” ) 
• I didn’t think of this at all  when drawing this (but I should have) the ejecting ink defense fascinated me… the black ink clouding the water it seemed like an evil tainting ….  I was interested in the fact that a creature I was fond of,  was of holding that black corruption inside of it, and that the substance could erupt from it if provoked. 
• They just look so fucking cool. 
• I like the octo car wash sign.

:)

Sketch book and Journal Scraps

With Love

I made this for Deviant Art.... They have this Valentine thing that they are doing..... Making it was fun....... I like love. 

Journal Scraps

Thoughts

Crush

…The story of my first heartbreaking crush. 

  When I was in grade school I had a crush on my best friend. He was fascinating to me. I was young, and I was not very mature for my age, my crush was deep, but not particularly sophisticated. Others got it… in a way that I did not. So, when I say I had a crush, what I mean here is that I loved my friend and every thing he did became important to me because he was connected to it. I didn’t dream of kissing him or even holding his hand…. my feelings were very, hmmm...pure …….for lack of a better word. 

I was aware that he had his own crush, on a girl other than me… and I was fine with that, I rooted for him. Somehow his love for her was warm for me too…and I enjoyed his happiness. 

This next part will take a bit of setup … I had a horrible neighbor. She was my nemesis. She was sadistic in a way that was unparalleled. AND, she did not like me… I was her target. It wasn’t bullying, more of a rivalry.

 Normally I will fight you if you think I am too nice. (most people think I am nicer than I really am.) but in this case, just trust me, I am the good guy… terrible, she was terrible. She  craved attention, and manipulated people with whatever they desired. She bought them things… did them favors, preyed upon their fears and used blackmail to keep herself in the center of a large group of friends. I have many stories …. but for the sake of this ….. just run with the given that she was evil. 

   My friends especially the target of my crush were supportive of me and would back me… I didn’t ask them to, but it made me feel good… made me love them even more. 

   SO… one day in 4th grade,  on a rainy day when we couldn’t go out on the playground she decided the class would hold a beauty contest. I was so out of the loop and such a tom boy that I didn’t even know it was going on until it was over ….But I won… and this is how I won. My friend Kalvin gave a speech before the vote saying that I should be included in the contest because even though I was fat … I had such a happy pretty face and I was a lot nicer than any of the other girls. So in 4th grade all the boys voted for me. With Kalvin I think he might have been fond of me, but with the rest I think it was simple… I was one of their buddies.It wasn’t about being attractive or anything romantic. Simply I was their friend so they were on my side. I think it was this incident that sparked everything … from that day she did everything she could to pick me apart. 

   Skip ahead two years…. Things change. 

I was in the house alone when I noticed she had a large group of people in her yard. She was seated in a tall backed wicker chair on top or the picnic table. They were playing some sort of kissing game… She was the queen and the boys would have to climb up on the table and kiss her hand in order to get permission to do certain things … She was  ordering people to kiss her and one another … Everything had to have her approval…. Ok I admit I know what they were doing because I was spying on them …. Sad I know…. 

I noticed that my friend was in her yard and so was the girl he loved. 

I waited until things calmed down a bit. I summoned my courage, and, I went outside. I didn’t go out specifically because I wanted to talk to him… even though I was dying to. I went out because I realized I was afraid  to… and that pissed me off. I didn’t want to hide in my own house, I didn’t want her to control me like she did the rest… So I invented a reason and I went out. 

When I happened to make eye contact with my friend he waved and came over to the fence to say hi. 

Even him being in her yard made me sick a little… I remember feeling queazy… knowing something bad was coming. I mean it was a betrayal on his part even being in her yard … she was the enemy… an enemy he had always helped me face. … but I wasn’t mad … I understood and even felt a little foolish and immature thinking of it that way. 

I was not prepared for what came next. 

My neighbor … the beast that she was,  came over to the fence as soon as she saw us talking and said this “ If you want to stay here with us you can’t talk to her, and you have to call her a bitch. “  

 Like it was in slow motion I saw him look beyond my neighbor at the girl he had a crush on … I saw in his eyes that he would do whatever was necessary to stay in that yard.

He argued with my neighbor a bit … but in the end he said in a casual uncommitted  way “Becky You’re a bitch” …. he distanced himself from the sentiment by no selling the emotion of the phrase, but, he said it. 

In that moment all the Love I held for him left me …. it was just gone. It was disturbing how quickly it happened, it was disturbing how empty I felt. I wasn’t angry… I wasn’t sad (yet) but there was a hole in me… It was like the thing that was most important to me …. the feeling I woke up with and went to bed obsessing over vaporized. 

 The outcome of any minor battle between my neighbor and I lost all importance, because she had won the war. I was destroyed.

After that day, when I saw my friend again at school… he apologized  and told me, it didn’t mean anything… he didn’t mean it. I forgave him saying it wasn’t a big deal… I wasn’t mad …. I remember hoping he wasn’t too upset and hoping that things went well for him………. but I also remember that it was no longer exciting to be with him. I remember it felt unpleasant, and I was so happy when the conversation was over….Remembering a thrill that I no longer felt made me sad.  happily  we drifted away from each other after that… it felt like effort being his friend. Somehow that was worse than hating him.

…and that is how my first big crush ended.